From a teacher:
I am sickened over this, as a mom, as an educator. How often do we see young children in our classrooms who need serious help and can’t find the resources to help them because of severe budget cuts? My school shares a guidance counselor with 2 other schools. She is awesome and does her best, but let’s be realistic. In this current day and age children are exposed to all kinds of violence. Many children are broken by fifth grade, the grade I teach, and it’s so frustrating not to be able to do anything, but hug them, reach out to the family and be there for them. At that point, testing is a non-issue. My prayers go out to all involved. I just tell myself there are 20 more angels in heaven looking down on us. Maybe they will be able to help us.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My school has been very proactive about safety and using lock down drills, but if god-forbid something were to occur at my school the safety protocol would fail. We are told to have students hide in the corner away from the view of the windows on our classroom door. With significantly higher class sizes this year, staying out of view is impossible.
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In classrooms that have virtually no hiding places, we have been given the ok to put up curtains on our windows that are pulled out of the way during normal conditions. My room is at the end of a hallway with an access door in the hall and a gazzillion windows, but fortunately, there is a rather large storage closet between my room and the next one. The only problem is, the closet cannot be locked, only the classroom doors.
Many times during discussions about lock-downs, students ask how we can be safe if an intruder forces his or her way in to the school or into a room. I tell the children that time is on our side, and we must react quickly to “hide and be silent.” Learning that the shooter forced his way into Sandy Hook, I feel as if my reassurances will be met with narratives about this story. The best I can do is tell them that we react quickly to be as safe as we can.
Since Columbine, we all have had this scenario in the backs of our minds, but this tragedy brings it home to those of us trusted to teach so many young innocents. The heartbreak is numbing.
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At least you have safety drills. We only have a million fire drills–some with coats, some without depending on the number of bells you hear. (and of course shelter drills). Of course my principal loved calling the without coats on the coldest days. The drills with coats were particularly harder on cluster teachers since they have to travel from room to room and therefore were the ones freezing in winter. But we took those drills just as seriously.
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Please read, it’s heartbreaking
http://anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com/2012/12/thinking-unthinkable.html
A mom who is fearful for her son and ultimately us.
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Thank you for sharing that blog. I just sent it to my niece, These children are constantly sent home with more meds and inadequate after care. Judges are always giving excuses too like ‘let’s see if this happens again” and when it does, they say it again and again as if they have blinders on. They need to be more proactive.
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Go look at the national statistics. If they are not at grade level by the third grade they are in real trouble. What kind of insanity are we doing by not having help for young children? Look at RTI which is a methodology to deny identification and for inter fund transfer of up to 60% of the special ed catagorical money into the general fund to do anything with except help those children and you never lose the funding. Most educrats do not care about children only their own grants and/or income and career and who cares what happens to our youth.
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You bring up an excellent point about RtI, George. I have seen it used as a tool to delay (indefinitely, as timelines vary from district to district) much desperately needed services, and for what?
1. It saves a district money. 2. It keeps the SpEd subgroup below
the number (45 where I am) so that the SpEd kids’ test scores will
not be counted for the school(s), and they and an entire district can make AYP.
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